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Armenian gov’t fails to levy taxes

29 September 2016 11:47 (UTC+04:00)
Armenian gov’t fails to levy taxes

By Rashid Shirinov

Armenia recorded a strong fall in tax payments due to the economic difficulties of large taxpayers in several industries of the country.

Deputy Head of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia Vakhtang Mirumyan announced about this at the Parliament on September 28.

The first problematic sector of Armenia is the mining industry because the metals prices on the world market remain at low level.

The second one is the financial and banking sector, where there is no value-added tax (VAT), and the main revenue is from the income tax. A number of country’s banks have registered objective tax losses in 2015 and during 2016.

The third problem is observed in Armenian telecommunication companies that suffer from a decrease in the use of voice services.

And the fourth are alcoholic drinks, mainly cognac, that are hardly being sold in Russia due to the economic difficulties of ruble.

“About 47 billion drams ($99 million), that had to be charged from 181 of 520 enterprises registered as the large taxpayers, were missing from taxes of January-August 2016. That is very much, considering that 54 percent of tax revenue we receive from these companies,” said Mirumyan.

In the meantime, international financial donor organizations have recently imposed strict requirements to the Armenian authorities, demanding the tax revenues in Armenia to be increased by 60-70 billion drams ($127-148 million) annually.

And it seems that the Armenian government will once again have to address for foreign loans. The state debt of Armenia in the first half of 2016 made up $5.345 billion, thus increasing by 5.3 percent from the beginning of the year , according to the official statistics.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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